


What's In a Name?

by muse_in_absentia



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:59:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5963179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muse_in_absentia/pseuds/muse_in_absentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes even something as simple as a name can be much more complicated than anyone wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's In a Name?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mutuisanimis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutuisanimis/gifts).



> So I had this idea, and the timing worked out perfectly, so now it's a birthday present for the amazingly wonderful [mutuisanimis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mutuisanimis) because she deserves all the good things. (I know I'm a day early, but I wasn't sure if I would be around to post tomorrow, and I decided early was better than late.)
> 
> Unbeta'd, so please feel free to yell at me for any mistakes.

The best part about having a roommate was said roommate's girlfriend, who happened to have a single room. Which was how Ronan found himself alone more often than not, contemplating why Connor hadn't just moved all of his things into Leslie's room by now. Especially since he had to keep picking up after his absentee roommate. A little mess was one thing, but he was starting to be able to smell the laundry from across the room. 

A dog-eared copy of the Iliad was flopped lifelessly on his mattress by his knee, its spine having given up the will to live a couple generations of students earlier. After nearly a solid hour spent staring at the same page (which he wasn’t even sure was the correct page) Ronan felt a little like the books binding; cracked down the center fading out to a little mushy around the edges, so many thoughts jumbled around inside, in three different languages, that it would take scholars lifetimes to sort them out, and even then there would be some debate. 

"Well, feck this," he muttered to himself, toes burrowing under the messy pile of comforters bunched around him, black jeans digging into the backs of his knees and making them itch. 

It wasn't that he wanted to not do his class reading, he was already three sections behind as it was, but his concentration was shot. He had briefly entertained the idea of going home, just for a change of scenery, but his mother didn't even know about his wizardry and he didn't want to explain how had gotten there so quickly when she had just spoken to him on the room phone an hour earlier, so he quickly slid past that idea. 

His first choice for real stress relief these days would be to pop over for a quick visit with Kit and Nita, but a check of his internal manual quickly showed them to be inaccessible for an indeterminate period of time. After that he was sort of out of ideas. 

Grabbing the cup of coffee he had forgotten about on the edge of his desk he took a mouthful, then nearly spit it back out for being cold. A few grumbled words in the Speech made it hot again, but did nothing to improve his mood. Even coffee wasn't that talented. 

The end of his highlighter was caught between his teeth as he grabbed the book back up and listlessly turned the pages trying to remember where he had been when he passed out the night before. Three turns through the pages he thought he had finished and he couldn't remember having read any of it. With a groan he tossed the book aside and ran his fingers through his hair. 

"Fine, let's do this," he muttered to himself while stuffing his feet into his boots before almost desperately flinging together a teleportation wizardry to take him to New York. 

A distinctly dizzying tug-pull-spin-compress sensation hit Ronan for a fleeting second before spitting him back out slightly unsteadily next to a large hedge. 

Three sets of eyes blinked at him before the two that were about a foot and a half off the ground went back to silently pleading for food. The final set, furrowed slightly before smoothing out above a smile. 

"I am going to assume from the slightly panicked look you aren't hiding very well that this isn't a social call," Tom Swale said calmly, stretching out from where he had been crouched feeding the koi and protecting the fish food from two hungry dogs. 

Ronan shook his head, then shrugged, then shook his head again. "Maybe a little of both?" he hedged, scuffing his feet and feeling uncharacteristically awkward. He wanted to bluster his way through this the same way he did through most things, even opened his mouth to do so, but somehow that didn't seem like the right approach this time, which left him at a loss for how to proceed. 

As soon as Annie and Monty realized that no food was coming their way from Tom they both wound their way over to Ronan, tails wagging, and nosing at his pockets and making him chuckle despite himself. 

"I don't have anything for you two walking vacuums," he said, reaching down to scratch behind ears and along muzzles. 

"Well, assuming that you didn't come here to be harassed by our dogs, what can I help you with?" Tom asked, trying to wrangle the dogs inside with Ronan trailing behind. 

It took a couple of deep breaths before Ronan found his voice, which made him clench his fists into his sleeves and mentally curse himself for a coward. 

"I have a question," he started. 

When he didn't continue Tom raised his eyebrows and waited for Ronan, frustration at his own reticence spurring him to speak. 

"If I'm overstepping you can say that," Ronan muttered, just restraining himself from running a hand through his hair. "I'm probably overstepping." He swallowed a couple of times trying to chase the metallic taste out of the back of his throat at having to start with those words, but this wasn't the sort of conversation he wanted to have colored with any sort of ambiguity. 

"Would you like some coffee?" Tom asked, waving Ronan into the kitchen. 

Grateful for the reprieve, Ronan gave Tom a tight smile. "If I have any more caffeine I think my teeth are going to start vibrating," he said, shaking his head. "But since I have a ten page paper due in a week on a book I haven't finished yet, and a pop quiz on Monday for a class that I can't find my notes for, even after a location wizardry, which turned up all my missing dryer socks, a pair of Daryl's trainers and my mum's car keys but not my notes, I would love some coffee. Thank you." 

"How exactly do you know you have a pop quiz?" Tom asked, while filling the coffee pot and turning it on to percolate, the smell of fresh coffee filling the kitchen. 

Ronan shrugged, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table and forcing himself not to drum his fingers. Summoning up one of his usual overly confident grins he accepted a mug of coffee and slouched back in the seat, not quite daring to lean the chair back, but close. "Oh, it's the _content_ that's a surprise, not the timing." 

A chair scraped across the floor as Tom sat across from him, but before either of them could speak the front door thudded closed and Carl came into the kitchen looking exhausted, his suit jacket unbuttoned, his tie loose around his neck. He made an abortive little motion with his hand, as if he was going to rest it on Tom's shoulder, before he noticed Ronan and stopped himself. 

Ronan felt, suddenly, like he was intruding, despite the warm smile that Carl flashed him. "I didn't realize we had company," he said, his eyes crinkling with what appeared to be both a real smile and extreme weariness. 

"Ronan stopped by with a question, we were just getting around to it," Tom replied, passing back his coffee for Carl to drain quickly. 

Carl grunted at the coffee. "Sometimes I forget just how much sugar you put in this," he muttered before handing Tom the empty cup. "I'm going to go get out of this straight jacket. There are days I envy your ability to wear jeans to the office," he added as he trudged out of the kitchen and towards the stairs, the dogs trailing at his ankles. 

"And by the office, you mean our living room?" Tom called after him with a grin. Still smiling, Tom turned back to Ronan, looking a bit abashed. "Sorry about that. What can we help you with?" 

Plowing ahead before he lost his nerve, Ronan frowned at the table top. "How did you know?" 

"You'll have to be more specific than that," Tom answered, looking a little more serious. 

Rather than explain, Ronan tossed a wizardry out onto the table for Tom to look at. His name. 

"Oh," Tom said softly, quickly reading it over. 

Ronan waved a hand in the direction that Carl had disappeared. "So if it's not too presumptuous of me to ask, how did you know? Because this has been driving me mental." 

Swiping a hand over his face, Tom gave a self-deprecating little snort. "That might be a rather long story," he muttered. 

Feeling defeated, Ronan sighed and made to stand. "That's all right. I don't want to pry. I'll just-" 

"It's only a long story because he's asking the wrong person," Carl interrupted as he walked back into the kitchen, sans dogs but wearing faded jeans and a blue polo, glancing at where Ronan's name was still casually scrawled across the table. 

"By all means, then," Tom said, standing up to refill coffees, pulling out a third mug in the process. 

"You came from the sort of background where it was always an option," Carl replied, still talking to Tom. "You had to try on different ideas and see which one fit you, which one you felt at home in. For someone raised Catholic the idea of being anything other than the model husband and Catholic wasn't really presented. I never once thought I could be anything else. Until one day I realized I would rather drink your overly sweet coffee than my own perfectly made coffee, because it was yours." 

"And if you knew how much he cared about his coffee you would understand what a sweet sentiment that really is," Tom chuckled. 

"The point is," Carl continued, turning to Ronan, "That there is no right answer. You might think one thing, believe it with everything in you, until one day you just don't anymore. There are no firm answers. You should know that as well as anyone." 

Ronan sighed and stared down at his own name in the Speech, where he had finally been forced to add a "questioning sexuality" descriptor that he wasn't entirely prepared to deal with. 

Apparently he wasn't as subtle in his disappointment as he had hoped, because Carl sighed and sat down next to Tom, sliding his chair a little closer so that their shoulders were touching. A small part of Ronan wondered if that was for his benefit, or if the fact that they hadn’t been doing it before had been for everyone else's benefit. He sort of hoped it wasn't the latter, that they didn't feel like they couldn't be themselves when they weren't alone. Hopefully they were just private about it. 

"Okay," Carl started, pointing to a spot in Ronan's name, "has this thing about reading always been here?" 

Ronan shook his head, not quite sure where this was headed, and fighting off the urge to drain his coffee all at once. There was only so much of someone else's coffee you could drink before it started to look rude. 

"And this bit about instant cappuccino?" 

Again, Ronan shook his head. 

"I can assume," Tom added, "that things have been removed as well. Things that you've grown out of or away from." 

"Of course," Ronan said, just barely stopping himself from rolling his eyes. "Whose name hasn't changed?" 

Tom and Carl exchanged a long look at that, before both of them sighed nearly in unison. "Why is it," Tom lamented, "that everyone understands that, but when it comes to this one little description," he pointed to the section in question, the entire reason for Ronan showing up unannounced in their yard, "everyone thinks it's unchangeable?" 

The surprise must have been spilling off of him, and while he wasn't quite sure what his face was doing it did make Carl smile at him gently. 

"I never thought of myself as gay," he said, nudging Tom lightly with his shoulder. "To this day I've never decided if I'm actually bisexual, or if Tom is just special enough I was willing to make an exception. Since I never really planned on there being anyone else, I didn't really care which it was. But until I met Tom it wasn't something I ever had to define, and after, well, I decided it was as prone to change as anything else about me." 

The smile Tom flashed at Carl made Ronan feel like he was intruding, not for the first time today. "And I've never thought I was anything except gay, but I'm not going to hold to that so strongly that I limit myself." 

"I don't know how much help any of that really is," Carl shrugged. 

"But maybe a new perspective to look at it from will be of some use," Tom finished for him. 

Ronan made himself shrug, not entirely sure of that at all. "It's at least something to think about," he said, finally, because that much was true without getting back into all of his doubts. 

The snort Carl let out as Ronan was standing and heading out of the kitchen and towards home, however, made him stop and turn back around. 

"Someday you'll meet someone and you won't even notice it happening until it's too late, and by then you'll be in so deep you won't want to turn around," Carl said, smiling still. "Until then, don't worry about it so much, it'll just change on you when you least expect it to." 

And while Ronan may have had the sense to not mention anything about not noticing when his snarking had turned into flirting, or a particularly memorable conversation about a hot tub, he couldn't quite keep himself from flushing, to his mortification. 

"I think you might be more sure of yourself than you're aware of," Tom laughed. 

"And that's my cue to head on home," Ronan muttered, his face growing hotter by the second. 

Fleeing out the back door he nearly ran into a very disheveled looking Kit and Nita. There was dirt smudged on both their faces, and some sort of strange purple fungus clinging to them like a fine growth of fur. 

He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, finally settling on snorting at them. "You know what, I'm not even going to ask." 

"Good choice," Nita grumbled, her tone implying bodily harm if he changed his mind. 

Sauntering away before either of them thought to ask what he was doing there, Ronan couldn't quite keep himself from turning around and calling back, "Oh, and Kit? Purple's a good color on you." 

Kit grinned, taking a step towards Ronan. "Maybe you should try some," he laughed, scraping off some of the fungus and reaching out to Ronan with it. "It would be interesting to see you in some color for once." 

If anyone later mentioned the undignified squawking sound Ronan made he would deny it. (Well, maybe not in the Speech.) He jumped back, turning pleading eyes on Nita. "Nita, stop your boyfriend, he has to be at least almost as afraid of you as I am!" 

Nita just laughed, making no effort to stop Kit at all. "When you two are done with this weird flirting thing you've been doing I'll be in with Tom and Carl." She was still smiling as she let herself inside, but Ronan was fairly sure his heart stopped for a moment before picking back up again at twice the speed. 

When the door clicked closed behind her Kit turned a much gentler smile at Ronan. "She still doesn't know about the-" 

"And we're not talking about it again," Ronan cut in, probably sharper than he meant to. 

Hands held out in supplication, Kit chuckled. "But you should probably tell her at some point. She's pretty observant and she'd rather you tell her than she has to figure it out for herself." 

Ronan sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, grateful that Kit was taking this so well, but still not really sure how to talk about it. "As soon as I figure it all out for myself you two will be the first to know." As he said it he was surprised to find that it was true. These were some of his best friends, sudden impulse to kiss Kit aside. And Nita, well, she might be terrifying, but that was no less true when he had first kissed her all those years ago. Even if his desire to do that may have faded he still wanted them _both_ to be a part of his life, and that included this part. He really did have some more thinking to do. 

"Good," Kit grinned. "Now get out of here and let me head inside before Nita thinks I've been abducted." 

"Again," Ronan added, smirking. 

"Martian princesses and Irish smartasses." Kit shook his head. "I do get stuck with the strangest people." 

Shoving at Kit's shoulder Ronan laughed and started stringing together the wizardry that would take him home. "Get out of here before your girlfriend threatens to annihilate me." 

Kit snorted but headed for the door. "Oh, and Ronan?" 

Ronan just raised his eyebrows at him. 

"You have something right..." Kit trailed off and pointed to a spot just at Ronan's temple. 

When Ronan swiped his hand through his hair he felt something prickly and warm, and his hand came away covered in purple. The door was slamming behind Kit before Ronan had a chance to retaliate, and he decided to just finish the teleportation wizardry rather than chase him inside. It wasn't like he wouldn't see them again soon enough.


End file.
